"Search the moon by her own light; To take an inventory of all Her real estate and personal;-- To measure wind, and weigh the air, And turn a circle to a square; And in the braying of an ass, Find out the treble and the bass; If mares neigh _alto_, and a cow In double diapason low."[167] Evelyn got angry, and pretended to be calm. Cowley expressed his anger with a generous indignation. The following passage in his _Ode to the Society_ concludes with a fine, appropriate simile. "Mischief and true dishonour," says he, ---- "fall on those Who would to laughter and to scorn expose So virtuous and so noble a design, So human for its use, for knowledge so divine. The things which these proud men despise and call Impertinent, and vain, and small, Those smallest things of Nature let me know, Rather than all their greatest actions do! Whoever would deposed Truth advance Into the throne usurped from it, Must feel at first the blows of Ignorance, And the sharp points of envious Wit. So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance In many thousand years A star, so long unknown, appears, Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, It troubles and alarms the world below, Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show."[168] Perhaps a part of the jealousy against the Royal Society arose from a notion which has since become not uncommon, that bodies of this nature, incorporated by kings, are calculated rather to limit inquiry, than to enlarge it. Without stopping to discuss this point, we shall merely observe, that the real greatness of all such bodies, like those of nations themselves, must arise from the greatness of individuals; and that whether the bodies give any lustre to them or not, there is no denying that the individuals give lustre to the bodies. When Sir Isaac Newton became president, jesting ceased.